The global economy has forced many businesses to operate and conduct business in an ever increasingly efficient manner due to increased competition. Accordingly, inefficiencies that were once tolerated by corporations, due to a prior parochial nature of customers and suppliers, now have to be removed or mitigated so that the respective corporations can effectively compete in a vastly more dynamic marketplace.
Many industrial processes are subject to sensor controlled interlock systems and optimization of process line “uptime” through input from numerous other sensors associated either directly or indirectly with the process line. Such sensors may monitor environmental conditions, fans, conveyor systems, compressors, gear boxes, motion control devices, electric motors, pumps, and mixers, as well as hydraulic and pneumatic machines driven by motors. Further, such sensors frequently monitor the human interface components of process lines and may control process line interlocks (e.g., they may interrupt or halt an active production line, or prevent the startup of a production line, based on an operator or worker's actions, or process line or environmental conditions, in relation to sensors associated directly or indirectly with the process line). For example, machines and plant environments can endanger the life and health of personnel and improved sensors can reduce the exposure of personnel to such risks.
Often, sensors and other devices in an industrial process must meet certain compliance requirements to provide long term functionality of the process line. Further, where sensors are employed in critical applications, for example worker safety sensors and/or devices, these sensors can be held to stringent compliance requirements. Sensors or devices that fail to meet these compliance requirements (e.g., noncompliant sensors or devices) may result in failure of a process line to start-up where a noncompliant sensor or device is connected to a process line interlock, cause damage to the process line either by causing the process line to run outside of acceptable parameters or by direct damage to the process line (e.g., the noncompliant device causes a power spike on a system bus damaging other electrical components, the noncompliant device causes a repetitive stress injury to a process line worker interacting with the device, etc.), cause failures of products produced on or associated with a process line associated with the noncompliant device (e.g., a noncompliant temperature sensor on a chemical process line may change the reaction temperature by providing erroneous temperature readings resulting in no damage to the process line but resulting in a chemical product that is dangerous or otherwise outside of acceptable product parameters, etc.), other unacceptable conditions, or combinations thereof among others. Ensuring that a sensor or device associated with the process line is compliant is of significant importance in light of the high cost of infrastructure, reliable products meeting production specifications, efficiency of the process line or the business objectives of a business entity, minimizing down-time of a process line or business entity relying on a process line and facilitating a safer working environment.
Further, such sensors are combined with other system components, such as valves, pumps, furnaces, heaters, chillers, conveyor rollers, fans, compressors, gearboxes, and the like, as well as with appropriate motor drives, to form industrial production lines. For example, a break press workstation may be combined with a pressure sensor to ensure that a worker is in the proper position to operate the break press on the production line, as well as with several other sensors monitoring the position of work pieces entering and exiting the break press to ensure that the work pieces are properly positioned for operation of the break press, whereby the failure of any sensor, use of an incompatible sensor, or worse, the intentional bypassing of a sensor, may result in a failure of the process (e.g., damaging work pieces, the break press itself, the operator or bystanders, and may result in extended and expensive downtime of the entire associated process line).
The sensors incorporated into such process line systems (e.g., interlock sensors, environmental sensors, area sensors, process condition sensors, zone protection sensors, among many others) are commonly chosen according to specifications for a particular application or process in which the sensor or sensor system is to be employed. For example, a risk analysis of a process line can be carried out to identify hazards, assessment of hazards and techniques to reduce the acceptable residual risk. Some of the common hazards of machines can include, among others, mechanical hazards, electrical hazards, thermal hazards, hazards by noise, vibration, radiation, material and other substances, hazards posed by non-ergonomic design related issues. Appropriate sensors and/or devices can be selected to help achieve a desired machine or process line fault tolerance and level of safety according to relevant directives and standards, such as, operator position, vibration levels temperatures, production levels, speeds, pressures, fume levels, ruggedness, mean time between failure (MTBF) levels, or combinations thereof, among other criteria or metrics.
While the operating specifications for the sensor system components may provide for component device selection to achieve one or more system operational maxima (e.g., temperatures, caustic chemical resistance, etc.), other performance metrics (e.g., efficiency, cost, lifetime, MTBF, sensor degradation, etc.) for the components and/or the system of which they form a part, are not typically optimal. For example, even where a sensor may be replaced with an identical sensor upon failure, the replacement may not be optimal where an improved replacement sensor has become available. A second example is that a sensor is repeatedly failing at 50% of the claimed MTBF period indicating that either the sensor is from a substandard manufacturer or that the environmental conditions of the sensor are not what they were thought to be. The cost of replacing a sensor that impacts a production line is not just the cost of the sensor itself, rather it must include the cost of lost production and exposure to risk for production line workers. Repeated replacement of sensors with substandard components, inoperative components, or improper components, is likely inefficient and costly. These issues may be magnified where single vendor sensor system component selection is not desirable from a cost or availability standpoint. Purchasing sensor system components from discrete vendors may reduce costs to the production line owner but correspondingly may increase costs for determining which vendor's product has failed, designing a metric system for comparing components from separate vendors, and management costs of replacements components. Thus, separate selection of components based on cost or individual efficiencies may result in an integrated system that is sub-optimal with regard to efficiency, throughput, or other optimization criteria.
Moreover, typically, the specification for such machines or components thereof is performed at an isolated level or level of granularity such that higher-level aspects of a business or industrial concern are overlooked. Thus, there is a need for methods and systems by which, compliance, efficiency, and other performance characteristics associated with selecting and utilizing control systems and methods for self-sensing and communication with sensor systems and components thereof may be improved.